{"id":19493,"date":"2024-04-04T20:24:56","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T00:24:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19493"},"modified":"2024-04-04T20:24:56","modified_gmt":"2024-04-05T00:24:56","slug":"the-twist-of-a-knife-by-anthony-horowitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19493","title":{"rendered":"‘The Twist of a Knife,’ by Anthony Horowitz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Anthony Horowitz<\/strong> is a very famous author and screenwriter whom I don\u2019t recall ever hearing of before. (Though he created both Midsomer Murders<\/em> and Foyle\u2019s War<\/em>.) I got a chance to read The Twist of A Knife<\/a><\/em>, book 4 in his Hawthorne and Horowitz series, and found it distinctive, well-crafted, and entertaining. Also a little weird. Which isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this series, apparently, author Horowitz has cast his real-life self as the narrator. References to his own life seem to be authentic (I have no way of checking). But here he has invented a situation (I assume it\u2019s fictional) where he\u2019s gotten involved with an enigmatic private eye known only as Hawthorne. They solve cases together, and Horowitz turns them into bestselling books. Hawthorne appears to be somewhat autistic. Certainly peculiar. He was kicked off the police force, lives in a sterile flat, and never talks about his life. He keeps his own counsel entirely, and Horowitz can never tell what he\u2019s thinking. He\u2019s not above petty revenge when he feels insulted. There are echoes of Holmes and Watson here, but Hawthorne is Holmesian in a highly distilled form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As The Twist of a Knife<\/em> opens, Horowitz is telling Hawthorne that he wants to end their association. The books they\u2019ve produced have done well, but it\u2019s all been too intense for him. He wants to go back to his quiet life of ordinary writing. Anyway, his first West End play is about to open. He hopes this will be the beginning of a stellar playwrighting career, a new stage in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first night seems to go well. But critic Margaret Throsby is in the audience \u2013 the most hated critic in London. She appears at the first night party and insults the cast, and then writes a scathing review. Soon after that, she\u2019s dead \u2013 stabbed to death with a dagger which happens to belong to Anthony Horowitz. The police question him, and he suddenly finds himself in personal need of Hawthorne\u2019s detective skills \u2013 but will Hawthorne be willing to help?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tone is generally light, though the dramatic tension is elevated enough. Horowitz is not a great prose stylist, and his characterizations are (in my opinion) a little superficial. But the plot was extremely neat and clever. The book succeeds primarily on the author\u2019s inventiveness, and that is formidable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author also deserves credit for venturing into the dangerous territory of discussing race and \u201ccultural appropriation.\u201d He does it in a safe way, by making the minority concerned one whose actual presence in England is negligible, but I think he was brave to address it at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The classic Agatha Christie \u201cpayoff\u201d scene was artfully done. There was even a positive Narnia reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Twist of a Knife <\/em>is a professionally crafted detective entertainment that will particularly delight fans of the Cozy subgenre. Worth the price for the entertainment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anthony Horowitz is a very famous author and screenwriter whom I don\u2019t recall ever hearing of before. (Though he created both Midsomer Murders and Foyle\u2019s War.) I got a chance to read The Twist of A Knife, book 4 in his Hawthorne and Horowitz series, and found it distinctive, well-crafted, and entertaining. Also a little … Continue reading ‘The Twist of a Knife,’ by Anthony Horowitz<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[5132,5133,5134],"class_list":["post-19493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-anthony-horowitz","tag-hawthorne-and-horowitz","tag-the-twist-of-a-knife"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19494,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19493\/revisions\/19494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}